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Speakers at an international conference on the human rights implications of arms trade have argued that Western nations and arms companies are complicit in aiding repressive Arab regimes in West Asia region to spy on their citizens.
Participants at ‘Selling Death: Why the International Arms Trade Must be Controlled’ conference decried what they described as a “corrupt” arms trade that brought in huge profits for the “global military-industrial complex.”
Egyptian human rights activist Sherif Mansour spoke of “the quiet war,” which he said takes place every day across West Asia whereby “governments use violence against their own population to build the fear barrier to stop them from ever dreaming to be free like they did 10 years ago in the Islamic Awakening.”
He went on to highlight that much of what happens is “enabled by Western capitals through the software arms trade, the surveillance industry.”
The conference, organized by independent advocacy and research platform Egypt Watch, took place on Saturday in London in collaboration with the Project for Peace and Justice, founded by British politician and former Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn.
The Peace and Justice Project campaigns to “bring people together for social and economic justice, peace, and human rights” and to build “solidarity and hope for a more decent world,” according to its website.
“The international arms trade is extremely profitable for the global military-industrial complex,” Osama Gaweesh, Editor-in-Chief at Egypt Watch, said in his opening remarks at the conference.
He added, “It is riddled with bribery and corruption which has been known to be a main source for arms co-operations.”
Abdullah Alaoudh, the Director for the Gulf at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a nonprofit organization that promotes democracy, also addressed the conference.
“Despite the wide-ranging concerns in the US and the United Kingdom about Saudi Arabia military intervention in Yemen, both Washington and London continued their support and continued to export arms to Saudi Arabia from 2015 to 2019 during the Yemen war,” Alaoudh said.
